I beleive that was an observation made by Alexis Tu Quoqueville. 
You missed what I think are the two main sources:
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The stereotypical “ugly American” tourist. You don’t notice the quiet, polite ones.
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Media reporting the “only in America” stories* which are filled with bizarre behaviour. Again, that’s because the stand-out stories sell, while “An Americna buy bought a pint of milk today!” doesn’t.
*Don’t worry, there are plenty of stories about all sorts of nationalities. But we’re talking about the America ones here.
I think this says more about the domestic belief in “American exceptionalism” than the reality of the statistics. Namely that you, as an American, believe that “every person on earth wanted come here to live”.
They didn’t; but that you believe that is a surefire indicator of the American exceptionalism belief.
Our population is like any other population. We just had a real strong period of gaining wealth and power. Our population was able to educate itself and take advantage of the chances.
Now we have an unemployment problem. a bankruptcy problem, a foreclosure problem and lots of other problems. We did not get dumber, the chances to get ahead just dried up.
The Chinese and Indians did not get smarter. they just were given opportunities that once were ours. It is a new world. We are not going to dominate it as a people. International corporations will. They will simply go wherever more money can be made.
Our government is more violent than most. That is not an attitude problem but one of having the power necessary to take advantage of other weaker countries. Our politicians and leaders could not resist the lure of easy money and power. Exploitation is a problem throughout history. We keep hoping a country with great power will use its power to do good and make the world a better place. It has not happened yet.
Nice.
Oh, that’s good. Very good!
Is Louisiana considered to be an English speaking area? 
I think there’s a certain lack of understanding on many foreigners’ part about the makeup of the US. Even though many of them come from Federal governments, I’m not at all sure that their states have nearly the level of autonomy about most things that the US states do. I’ve had people say things like “Why doesn’t your President just ban the death penalty?” and then are baffled when I say that he can’t and nor can the Congress, but that the Supreme Court probably could, but not ex cathedra, it’d have to be a case in Federal court that got appealed all the way up to them.
I think that sometimes this makes us look weak or disorganized in their eyes, when it’s more a matter of decentralization.
I think there’s a great deal of stereotyping on their part as well- not all Americans are fat, loud and ignorant any more than “all Italians smoke” or “all British have bad teeth” or “all French people are stinky and don’t bathe” or “Mexicans are lazy.” or even “Canadians are nice.”
Sell? Heck, that one wouldn’t make it past the proofreader. 
I guess you must mean, no English-settled country, because I can make you a pretty long list of English speaking countries with corruption problems far greater than those of southern Europe, whatever southern Europe means.
Well as an Aussie I would say that due to the large size of your country and the volume of your fringes it does tend to paint you as a bunch of loud, red neck, fundamental christians or gangbagers.
[QUOTE=Capitaine Zombie]
I guess you must mean, no English-settled country, because I can make you a pretty long list of English speaking countries with corruption problems far greater than those of southern Europe, whatever southern Europe means.
[/QUOTE]
If you don’t mind, I’d like to see that list. As for Southern Europe, here is a Wiki on it so that you can compare the relative corruption.
-XT
Type Africa. I’m sure wiki has made a page about that continent.
They do. ‘Africa’ is not a long list of countries, and doesn’t really constitute an answer on your part…more like a dodge. However, I’ll do the leg work for you. I assume you mean something like this.
So…which countries represented as having English as their official language make up your ‘long list’? It’s not a trick question, merely asking you to back up what you said with a list as you said you could. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.
Admittedly, it’s a hijack, so if you want to let it drop that’s fine with me too.
-XT
Errm, no.
But you see, that’s the thing: what we HEAR abour the RSA in our radio stations is that someone installed flamethrowers in their car doors to foil carjackers, and people leap to conclusions.
What people HEAR about America in our own media - never mind outside - is that fat machine-gun-toting Jesus-freak fans of Justin Bieber and Snooki are all bent up because the TV is interviewing Fred Phelps, PETA, anti-vaccinators, truthers and birthers in between stories of school board Zero Tolerance fuckups, sweet babies with pre-existing conditions being left to die, and gays want to get married. and they make their conclusions.
America is a country of extremes. Bit like India. Relative to the other G-8 states, our rich people are the richest, our fat people are the fattest, our athletes are the fastest, our dumb people are the dumbest, our smart people are the smartest, and our poor people are the most downtrodden.
That’s why American exceptionalism and reverse American exceptionalism are such popular narratives: they’re both true. We have Warren Buffet and Snooki.
It depends on the crime.
http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crimestats6.php
For murder, major assault we have far more crime. For rape and various forms of theft we do not.
Our incarceration rate isn’t listed in that chart, but it is far higher than most.
Crime is still a problem outside of the ghettos though. Murder isn’t nearly as common outside of the ghettos from what I can tell, but crimes like sexual assault, physical assault and theft seem like they’d occur just as often.
You think so? In what way?
I like to say, “Having a nice house doesn’t make you a good neighbor”.